A Horrible Butchery.

Three teenage boys made a shocking discovery in Philadelphia’s East Fairmont Park on December 26, 1888. They were in a secluded area near the reservoir where the Water Department stored pipes. Sitting atop a large steel pipe, one of the boys noticed two coarse gunny sacks inside the three-foot mouth of a nearby pipe. He thought they contained the clothes of a tramp. Another boy took a pocketknife and cut a hole in one of the bags, large enough to see that they contained the remains of a human body. Horrified, they ran to inform the clerk at the reservoir office. 

The police arrived with a patrol wagon and took the bags to the station house. They opened them and found that one bag contained a man’s legs, and the other contained his trunk and head. His hands were tied across his breast with a stout cord. He was wearing three shirts, but his legs were unclothed. The head was crushed as if by a blow from an axe or sharp-cornered club. The left leg had been severed near the trunk with a knife, and the bone sawn through. The right leg was similar, but the bone was partly sawn, then broken.

Beside the body was a page from the Philadelphia Record, dated December 6. On the lower margin was written, “Kohler Kelab, Hoboken Hotel.”  The face was covered with clotted blood, but when washed, the features were plain and apparently those of a light-complexioned man about 30 years old. Chief of Detectives Wood stated that the man had been murdered within the last 48 hours, somewhere near where the body was found.

The discovery caused great excitement in Philadelphia, with the population as anxious as the police to identify the body. The Hoboken clue brought Mrs. Kohler, proprietress of the Hoboken Hotel, to Philadelphia to look at the body. She positively identified the man as a Mr. Kreutzman, who had stopped at the Hotel on December 3 and then left for New York City. Despite the identification, the police continued their investigation.

Antoine Schilling had been missing since Christmas Day, and one of his friends thought a picture in the newspaper resembled Antoine. Six of his friends, including Susan Schroop, the daughter of Schilling’s landlord and business partner, Jacob Schroop,  went to view the body. They all identified the dead man as Antoine Schilling. 

The police visited the home of Jacob Schroop, four miles from where the body was found. They asked what had become of Antoine Schilling, and Schroop said, “I don’t know, he left here Monday night.” In the cellar of the house, police found a bloody axe and saw, as well as evidence that the floor had been cleaned and scrubbed. The police took Jacob to the stationhouse and put his wife and daughter under surveillance. 

Schroop was extremely nervous, and he collapsed on the steps of the stationhouse. He was helped inside, where he denied any knowledge of the murder.

Antoine Schilling boarded with the Schroop family, which consisted of Jacob Schroop, his wife Wilhelmina, and Susan, daughter from a previous marriage. Schilling, 24, and Schroop, 49, were business partners. They ran a small grocery and provisions store, but business was not going well. Early speculation said that Schilling had been murdered for his money, but he only had $80. 

Schroop maintained his innocence until Chief of Detectives Wood visited his cell at midnight on the night of his arrest. Around 2:00, Wood came out saying that Shroop had confessed. Schroop told him that he got up at about 5:00 on Christmas morning and found no food in the cupboard. He accused Schilling of eating all that was left. Schilling denied it, and a fight ensued. Schroop knocked him down and beat him to death with a heavy piece of wood. He left the body in the kitchen until that evening, then took it to the cellar and dismembered it, loading the parts into two bags. The next morning, he carried the bags by wagon to the park.

The police were happy to have a confession but did not believe Shroop’s account of the crime. They viewed the murder as a conspiracy involving the whole Schroop family, and it was beginning to break down. Wilhelmina Shcroop was prostrated with grief over the arrest of her husband, so much so that she had to be hospitalized. Under oath, in the presence of her father, Susan Schroop told the police that a few weeks earlier, her mother had begged her to put poison in Schilling’s coffee and became very angry when Susan refused. Her father denied this.

“You know I am telling the truth,” she said to him, “and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to ask me to lie.”

“Your stepmother is innocent,” said Schroop.

“That is not true,” she replied, “Oh, father, if you had never met that bad woman, you would never have killed this man. She has been your ruin.”

On the witness stand at the inquest, Wilhelmina denied any knowledge of the murder. As the coroner read Susan’s sworn statement, Wilhelmina exclaimed, “Oh! My God, such a lie; such a lie. Terrible, terrible! That girl’s down on me; she’s down on me, and that’s why she lies so.”

Other witnesses revealed more dirt on the family. Rosa Hatrick, landlady of Wilhelmina and Jacob before they were married, said that Wilhelmina, who was Mrs. Richter at the time, had left her husband and married Jacob while Mr. Richter was still alive. Special Officer Henry testified that Susan told him that her father wanted her to marry Schilling and then poison him. Owen McCaffery, their current landlord, testified that Jacob had ill-treated his daughter and that Wilhelmina had once told him that Schilling was her brother.

The coroner’s jury charged Jacob Schroop with the murder of Antoine Schilling and Wilhelmina (whom they now called Mrs. Richter) as an accessory before the fact. The crowd around the courthouse was so thick that several policemen had to clear a path to the patrol wagon that took them to jail.

Jacob Schroop was tried and easily convicted of murder in March 1889. He was sentenced to hang. The grand jury indicted Wilhelmina, but her attorney asked for a test of her mental condition to determine if she was fit for trial. She was examined by the prison physician and the prison agent, who determined she was of unsound mind. The Judge committed her to the Eastern Hospital for the Insane.

On February 20, 1890, at a double execution in Moyamensing Prison, Jacob Schoop was hanged on the same gallows with Thomas J. Cole, who murdered his roommate. Both men died quickly.

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Sources: 

“Accused by Their Daughter,” Chicago Daily News., January 3, 1889.
“Confessed He Murdered Schilling,” Kingston Daily Freeman., December 31, 1888.
“Doomed to the Gallows,” Sunday Inter Ocean, March 3, 1889.
“Foully Slain for $80,” Daily Inter Ocean, January 1, 1889.
“A Horrible Butchery,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 27, 1888.
“A Human Body in a Water Main,” Illustrated Police News, January 12, 1889.
“Is it Kreutzman?,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 29, 1888.
“Last Sunday On Earth,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 17, 1890.
“Mrs. Schoop Adjudged Insane,” New-York Tribune, June 25, 1889.
“Mrs. Schoop indicted for Murder,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 15, 1889.
“The Murder Rehearsed ,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 9, 1889.
“The Mystery Solved,” Chicago Daily News., December 31, 1888.
“The Noose,” Evening World, February 20, 1890.
“Park Mystery Solved Important,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 31, 1888.
“The Philadelphia Murder,” Evening Post, December 31, 1888.
“The Philadelphia Murder,” Cleveland Leader and Morning Herald., January 3, 1889.
“The Philadelphia Murder,” Daily Evening Bulletin, January 16, 1889.
“That Bad Woman,” Daily Saratogian, January 4, 1889.
“Two Executed on One Gallows,” New York Herald, February 21, 1890.

The Codman Murder.

 

James Nowlen murdered George Codman by cutting his throat from behind. Then he chopped the body into pieces which he threw into the snow as traveled down the road in his sleigh.

Read the full story here: Massachusetts Butchery.

The East River Murder.

The morning of February 8, 1898, the nude, dismembered body of a man was found floating in the East River, near a ferryboat slip on Roosevelt Street, New York City. The entire front portion of the head was missing, leaving only the right ear and a portion of the back of the head. The left leg was missing from a point just above the knee and the right leg had been cut off at the hip. Both arms had been cut off at the shoulder.

The cuts were smooth and intentional, eliminating the possibility that they had been taken off by steamboat paddle-wheels. The police were convinced that the man was murdered and butchered. 

Massachusetts Butchery.

Two young boys walking down a road in Lexington, Massachusetts, on January 4, 1887, found a bloody shirt atop a stone wall by the side of the road. They stopped to look around and saw a bundle of clothes lying on the crust of snow on the other side of the wall. The bundle consisted of an entire suit of men’s clothing, from undergarments to overcoat, all saturated with blood. The boys gathered the clothes and hurried back to town. The Lexington Police examined the clothing and believed that it was evidence that a murder had been committed within the previous 48 hours.

Their speculation was confirmed the following morning when L. I. Brooks, a farmer from Lincoln, Massachusetts saw what he thought was a large snowball in a patch of bloody snow. Looking closer he saw that it was a severed human head with two or three deep gashes in the left side. About four feet to the right of the head he found a severed arm. He left the body parts where he found them then drove his sleigh as fast as possible into Lexington to inform the Selectmen. A search party was sent out at once and by the end of the day, they had found the naked body of a man, half hidden by bushes in a gully about a mile from where the head was found. The head, left arm, and right leg of the body were missing. The search continued, but the missing leg was not found that day.

Decapitation and Dismemberment

Cutting the head and limbs off a corpse is hard and messy work. It is almost always an afterthought, an act of desperation by the murderer to avoid capture by hiding the identity of the body or to facilitate its disposal.

Of course, there were cases where decapitation was part of a deranged killer’s psychotic obsession.  Joseph Lapage raped and murdered 17-year-old Josie Langmaid, who was on her way to school in Pembroke, New Hampshire in 1875. Then, for no apparent reason, Lapage cut off her head and carried it half a mile before dropping it in the woods.

More often, the head was removed to obscure the identity of the corpse. The killers of Pearl Bryan in Newport, Kentucky, in 1896, were accused of severing her head while she was still alive. Whether she was alive at the time or not, Pearl Bryan’s head was removed to hide her identity. The killers might have succeeded in this if they had thought to remove her shoes as well.

He Knew Too Much.

Winfield Scott Goss was a chemical experimenter with a well-known fondness for intoxicating spirits. When his workshop, in a cottage outside of Baltimore, exploded in February 1872, no one doubted that the badly charred corpse found inside was his. No one, that is, but the four insurance companies who had sold policies on Goss’s life totaling $25,000. They had many questions, and Goss’s friend and brother-in-law William Udderzook had all the answers. But rather than quelling their doubts, Udderzook’s “plausible stories” only fueled them—he seemed to know too much.

The Boston Barrel Tragedy

1872 was an eventful year for Boston, Massachusetts. That year the city hosted the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival, lasting 18 days and drawing thousands of visitors. The Boston Red Stockings won the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players Championship. The Great Boston Fire devastated 65 acres of downtown real estate. And the dismembered body of Abijah Ellis was found stuffed inside two barrels, floating in the Charles River.

The Druse Butchery

December 1884, William Druse of Herkimer County, New York, was brutally murdered, dismembered, and burned, his ashes and bones dumped in a swamp. Evidence strongly pointed to his wife Mrs. Roxalana Druze murdering William; finally breaking after twenty years of physical abuse. She was sentenced to die and her hanging was protested many who opposed hanging women. Women’s rights groups called the trial unfair because Roxy did not have the same rights as her jury. More to the point though, there is a good chance she was not guilty of a hanging offense

Dr. George Parkman - "The Pedestrian"

Called “The Pedestrian” by one Boston newspaper, Dr. George Parkman was famous for his regular daily walks through town to collect rent and loan payments. He did not even own a horse, though he could have easily afforded one, coming from one of the richest families in Boston. His habits were so regular that when he failed to meet his wife for lunch November 23, 1849, it was impossible to imagine anything but foul play. Equally impossible to imagine was that the perpetrator was someone from his own social class. When his killer was found to be a former Harvard classmate and current Harvard professor, it became a society crime with a public following to rival America’s greatest celebrity murders.